Valentine's Day: 'The Miracle of Love'

Although Valentine’s Day has expanded to include everyone else, especially children, it began as a day for lovers. Therefore, our focus on Valentine’s Day is mostly on romantic love. Romantic love which is like training wheels to the ideal kind of love, can create the opening for our maximum love potential.

In his book, ‘The Miracle of Love’, Paul Ferrini says, “Love opens the mind/body consciousness to its maximum energetic potential enabling others to feel the energy of acceptance gratitude and kindness flowing directly to them. This opens their hearts and minds to their own potential and empowers them to share their creative gifts with others. This is how abundance is generated in the world.”

Romantic love can open us to our maximum potential if we remember to always incorporate the attributes of acceptance, gratitude, and kindness into our interactions with those we love. I think the reason that it has been said that familiarity breeds contempt, is that we often forget to shower our “beloved,” whether it be a spouse, partner or first date, with complete acceptance, gratitude and kindness.

Acceptance of what is, the most important aspect of love, whether it be romantic or unconditional, means acceptance of our bodies exactly as they are, not as we want them to be. Only when we become willing to accept our own body exactly as it is, can we become capable of accepting the bodies of those which whom we are involved romantically. That kind of acceptance can then become spring board to acceptance of situations and conditions in our lives just as they are now, not as we want them to be.

Once the acceptance piece is in place in a relationship, the energy of gratitude is a natural follow-up because an attitude of acceptance makes us conscious of all the reasons that we have to be grateful for those special people in our lives. At this point, appreciation for them and for all the little things they do for us becomes easier.

And of course, once acceptance and appreciation become a natural part of every interaction in your relationships, not only will you stop taking your significant other for granted, but there will be no contempt in your familiarity because you will make sure that the words you speak only spring from acts of kindness.

Do that and you will find that not only will your relationships improve, but with that expanded love energy flowing effortlessly through you as acceptance, gratitude and kindness, you will become emotionally strong, whole, mentally alert, happy, content and open to new possibilities that will be moving toward you and the ones you love.

And since your consciousness is nothing more than a temporary container for universal, creative energy, as your consciousness expands with the energy of love, you will become more open to its continual flow. And as that happens, your life will become a delicious cycle of unexpected good that as Jesus promised, “will return to you, pressed down, shaken together and running over.”

As always, the expression of your creative energy is linked with the choices you make in life. So as we move toward Valentine’s Day, the day of romantic love in this culture, I invite you to move beyond romantic love to a more expansive expression of love this year. For, as Deepak Chopra says in his book “Creating Affluence,” “There is no power stronger than love.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Rev. Julia Johnson, Ph.D, is the minister at Unity Church of Hilton Head Island.

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